SD-WAN extends the principles of software-defined networks to branch office and remote office connectivity. SD-WAN offerings like those from VeloCloud are able to aggregate several types of connections, including broadband, MPLS and cellular networks, to create more reliable and often less expensive connections than pure MPLS. According to research firm IDC, the SD-WAN market will exceed $ 1 billion this year, reaching $ 8 billion by 2021, up 69%.
VMware is best known for its virtual machine management software based on the ESX home hypervisor, and in this sense the acquisition of VeloCloud confirms VMware's strong interest in network management, mainly through acquisitions. In 2012, VMware had spent more than $ 1 billion to buy the start-up Nicira specializing in network virtualization, whose product is now sold by VMware under the name NSX. "It was predictable," said Brad Casemore, network analyst at IDC, commenting on the acquisition of VeloCloud. For a year and a half VMware has maintained partnerships with several SD-WAN providers, including VeloCloud, but also Silver Peak, CloudGenix and Versa.
An anchorage in medium and large companiesAccording to Mr. Casemore, financial analysts and manufacturers have pushed VMware to define its SD-WAN strategy more clearly. "By choosing to buy VeloCloud, VMware shows that it has found a company that is well established in medium and large enterprises, and which has also met with some success with service providers and telecommunications operators", explains the IDC analyst. Even if he does not foresee any immediate changes, Brad Casemore believes that VMware could integrate VeloCloud technology into several of its management tools. VMware could potentially provide customers with a single management platform that would control not only their virtualized data center network environment on NSX, but also branch office connections over the WAN. “Because these environments are now managed separately, a solution to cover these two areas is a source of value,” says the analyst. In addition, by acquiring VeloCloud, VMware is gaining a foothold in a growing market.
This acquisition puts even more pressure on suppliers like Cisco and HPE. Last summer, Cisco already bought SD-WAN provider Viptela for $ 600 million. As one of Cisco's biggest competitors in the SDN market officially makes its debut in SD-WAN, the two vendors may continue to invest in improving the underlying technology. HPE has yet to acquire an SD-WAN provider, but Brad Casemore believes it could take the plunge. Finally, earlier this year, Dell-EMC, which owns a majority stake in VMware, announced a partnership with three SD-WAN vendors, including VeloCloud, Silver Peak and Versa.
The San José OEM hopes that this acquisition and the integration of Kenna's solutions into its own technology stack will help transform the way security and IT teams work together to reduce the attack surface and reduce the time it takes to build. detection and response. Specifically, Cisco Security will use Kenna's technology to combine risk-based threat and vulnerability management as part of its SecureX cloud security platform, which was unveiled in early 2020. This “open and cloud” service native ”enables organizations to detect and remove threats to Cisco products and third parties from a single interface. With SecureX, IT security teams can automate and orchestrate security management across the cloud, network, applications, and enterprise endpoints. The service also includes the latest security threat intelligence from Cisco Talos, enabling customers to detect new threats faster.
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